6th Indian in a row... Arvind Mahankali wins Spelling Bee 2013

Ever heard of or know what is…… ‘knaidel’…. !!!!!!  It is double hattrick – which will make Indian community go gaga…

Last year and the year before  I had posted about this stating “It is a contest conducted with the purpose of helping the students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts, and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives. Interestingly, it is stated that the common interest among spellers is music” … it is Spell Bee and this year history repeated itself with more precision…

A spelling bee is a competition where contestants, usually children, are asked to spell English words.   The competition in US is now sponsored and fun by E.W. Scripps Company.  The competition has three distinct segments: Preliminaries, Semifinals and Championship Finals.  The winner faced a barrage of words like : euphemism; belemnoid; intravasation; erethic; glossophagine; trichocercous; galere; thonnier; chalumeau; dehenstufe; crapaud; kaumographer; tokonoma and knaidel…….. spelled all of them right  and won the championship title….

It is Arvind Mahankali from New York who has scripted history by winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the year 2013, becoming the sixth Indian-American to win the title in a row. “The words were extremely hard. It means that I am retiring in a good mood,” Arvind said after winning the prestigious national championship. This is the sixth consecutive year that an Indian-American has won the tournament, which was watched live by millions of people in the United States. A grade eight student, Arvind, 13, loves maths and science and plans to pursue a career as a physicist. Arvind had finished ninth in 2010 and third place in both 2011 and 2012.

This year there were  281 spellers ; Bee Week 2013 marked the first visit to the nation’s capital for 97 spellers. Speller 94 Tara Singh, of Louisville, Kentucky, was the youngest speller in this year's competition at age 8. Two spellers, speller 91, Vanya Shivashankar, and speller 191, Ashwin Veeramani, have siblings who have previously won the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The competition no doubt was tough with words like – cyanophycean [a blue green alga]; lanscenet [a card game]; Kaburi [a land crab]; cyanope [a person with fair hair and brown eyes]……….. not anything for commoners like us…

Here is the list of finalists ~ and you can make your own story :

1.       Arvind Mahankali, 13, Newyork.

2.       Pranav Sivakumar, 13, Illinois

3.       Sriram Hathwar, 13, New York

4.       Amber Born, 14, Massachusetts

5.       Vanya Shivashankar,11,  Kansas & Vismaya Kharkar, 14, Utah

6.       Grace Remmer 14, Florida; Chetan Reddy,13, Texas and Syamantak Pavra, 12, Texas.

7.       Christal Schermeister, 13, Florida

8.       Nikitha Chandran, 13, Florida

The word Knaidel [kenyd-;] a noun from Jewish cookery means : a dumpling, especially a small ball of matzo meal, eggs, and salt, often mixed with another foodstuff, asground almonds or grated potato, usually served in soup.

Hearty Congratulations to all the achievers

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

31st May 2013.